An anonymous reader quotes the Daily Mail: A potential class action lawsuit that claims Google discriminated against people over 40 is one step closer to becoming a reality. A motion for conditional certification of collective action status was filed in a San Jose federal court Wednesday, which could open up a suit to anyone over 40 who feels they had been discriminated against by the tech company and not hired because of his or her age. The suit would include “all individuals who interviewed in-person for any software engineer, site reliability engineer, or systems engineer position with Google in the United States in the time period from August 13, 2010 through the present; were age 40 or older at the time of interview; and were refused employment by Google….”

We’ve discussed ageism before on Slashdot. Now dcblogs shares an article from Computerworld, which says the lawsuit alleges a “systematic pattern” of discrimination, citing the median age of Google’s workforce as 29 (according to PayScale), while the median age for U.S. computer programmers is 43. “I think this is long overdue and potentially huge…” says Dan Lyons, who has complained about ageism during his time at HubSpot. “When it comes to age bias, the tech industry doesn’t even bother to lie…. Everyone in Silicon Valley knows this and everyone just accepts it.”